RHS Allotment Handbook & Planner
What to do when to get the most from your plot
Royal Horticultural Society · Mitchell Beazley, 2015
The year-shape book for a new plot: what to grow, where to put it, and a month-by-month calendar of what needs doing.
What's actually in it
- What to grow — crop selection for a plot-sized space.
- How and where to grow it — technique and siting.
- RHS tried-and-tested varieties, tied to the Award of Garden Merit.
- A month-by-month calendar of tasks running through the year — this is the "planner" half of the title, and the reason to buy it.
- The lifestyle and community side of allotment holding, which most growing books ignore entirely.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- A month-by-month calendar of tasks running through the year — the "planner" half of the title, and the reason to own it.
- RHS tried-and-tested variety recommendations, tied to the Award of Garden Merit.
- The lifestyle and community side of holding a plot, which almost every other growing book ignores entirely.
What we couldn't checkWe could not verify a single specific piece of content inside this book, and we're not going to invent any. There is no preview, no extract, and no review that quotes it; the only library scan is access-restricted. That is unusual, and combined with the anonymous byline and the 2015 publication date it's the weakest-documented book on this shelf.
Buy it if
You've just been handed keys to a plot and need to know what happens in March.
Don't buy it if
Anyone troubleshooting a specific persistent problem.
Where it falls short
Disease coverage is thin — prevention strategies and resistant-variety selection get much less room than they need. No-dig and composting, both now mainstream expectations on an allotment, are barely present. And it's short for its ambition: 224 pages covering selection, technique, siting, community and a full year-planner leaves limited depth anywhere. It's also 2015 content, unrevised, so the AGM variety lists have moved on.
Who wrote it
The byline is an institution, and that is the problem. Every UK listing credits only "Royal Horticultural Society" — the publisher says merely that it was written by the RHS's foremost fruit and veg experts. The four actual contributors surface only on US listings: Guy Barter (RHS Chief Horticulturist, ~35 years at the society, horticulture degree, ran the members' advisory service), Simon Akeroyd (head gardener or garden manager at RHS Wisley, Harlow Carr, Painshill and Agatha Christie's Greenway; 30+ books), Geoff Hodge (horticultural writer, former gardening editor of Garden News) and Sara Draycott, about whom we could find nothing at all. A UK reader has no way of knowing any of this.
Where it was written
The allotment is a British institution and this book is built entirely around it.
The facts
- AuthorRoyal Horticultural Society
- PublisherMitchell Beazley
- Published2015
- FormatPaperback, 224 pages
- ISBN-13
9781784721459 - LevelBeginner to improver
Checked against publisher listings, UK retailers and library records in August 2026. If any of this is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Where to get it
Buying secondhand? Match the ISBN above — several books on this shelf have editions that look identical but aren't.